Cabinet Painting in San Antonio

Should You Paint or Replace Your Cabinets?

Replacing kitchen cabinets in San Antonio generally starts around $10,000 and climbs well past $25,000 with custom work. Refinishing the ones you have runs a fraction of that, and on solid boxes the result is a kitchen that reads as new.

The question is whether your boxes are worth keeping. Most are. Cabinets built in the 1990s and 2000s are usually solid plywood or particle board carcasses that have decades left in them; what dates the kitchen is the honey oak finish and the hardware, not the structure.

Replacing makes more sense when the layout is wrong, the boxes are water damaged, or the doors are thermofoil that has already started peeling away from the substrate. We'll tell you which category you're in before we quote.

Founder Emmanuel Lailson looks at every kitchen in person before quoting, because the substrate decides how much work the job actually takes. It takes about fifteen minutes to work out.

Why Cabinets Need a Different Coating Than Walls

Cabinets take abuse walls never see. Skin oils, cooking grease, food acids, and weekly cleaning all hit the same few inches of door edge, day after day.

Standard wall paint stays soft, which is why brushed-on cabinet jobs start sticking at the door edges within a year. The failure is called blocking: the door tacks to the frame and pulls the finish off when it opens.

Cabinet coatings have to cure hard instead. The industry tests them against the ANSI/KCMA A161.1 standard, which puts a door in a hot box at 120 degrees and 70 percent humidity for a full day, then hits it with detergent, vinegar, and staining agents. That is the bar a kitchen finish has to clear.

We use Sherwin-Williams and specify a cabinet-rated product rather than the wall paint most painters reach for.

Oak, Thermofoil, and Laminate All Behave Differently

The substrate decides how much work the job takes, which is why we don't quote cabinets over the phone.

• Oak and other dark-grained woods: Oak carries natural tannins. Paint a light color over untreated oak and those tannins bleed through as yellow-brown stains, sometimes weeks after the job looks finished. It is the single most common reason a DIY oak-to-white kitchen goes wrong. We use high-bond shellac or lacquer-based primers to lock the tannins in before any color goes on. Heavy oak grain is the other issue. It telegraphs through paint no matter how many coats go on, so we level it with a multi-step grain filling process first. That step is what gives an oak door the flat, smooth look of modern slab cabinetry rather than a painted-over version of what was already there.
• Thermofoil and laminate: Both need a different primer and a different amount of prep. Thermofoil that has started lifting from the substrate is the hardest of the three to work with, and sometimes it is the case where replacement is the better call.

Sprayed, Not Brushed

We take the doors and drawer fronts off and finish them with HVLP spray equipment. The boxes stay in place, so your counters, sink, and everything inside the cabinets stay usable while the fronts are out.

High-volume low-pressure spraying atomizes the coating finely enough to lay down flat, without the brush marks or the stippled texture a roller leaves. Run your hand across a sprayed door and it feels like glass. That is the whole reason refinishing can pass for new cabinetry rather than looking like painted-over cabinets.

Upgrades Worth Doing While the Doors Are Off

Hardware work is far easier with the fronts already removed, so most people handle it in the same visit rather than paying to take the kitchen apart twice.

• Soft-close hinge conversions: We swap old hinges for soft-close dampers so doors stop slamming. This is the upgrade people notice every day afterwards.
• Hardware re-drilling and hole filling: Moving from dated knobs to modern pulls means new holes in different places. We fill the old ones, drill for the new hardware, and finish over the repair so nothing shows through.

Matte, Satin, or Semi-Gloss

• Matte: Matte hides imperfections in older wood better than anything else and reads modern, but it is the least wipeable of the three - a real consideration in a working kitchen.
• Satin: Satin is what most San Antonio kitchens end up with. It wipes down easily, and it is forgiving on prep in a way the other two aren't.
• Semi-Gloss: Semi-gloss is the most durable and the most reflective, which helps a smaller kitchen feel brighter, though it shows every flaw in the surface underneath.

What Cabinet Refinishing Costs in San Antonio

Professionally sprayed cabinet refinishing in San Antonio generally runs $2,500 to $6,500. Door count is the biggest driver, followed by the substrate and whether the grain needs filling. Going from a dark stain to white sits at the top of the range, since it takes the most primer to block bleed-through.

That's a market range, not a quote. We count the doors, check the substrate, and give you a written number that doesn't change once work starts.

Why Homeowners Trust Us With Their Kitchens

• Sprayed with HVLP equipment, not brushed or rolled
• Shellac or lacquer bonding primers on oak so the finish doesn't yellow later
• Grain filling available for oak doors that need a flat, modern surface
• Soft-close hinges and hardware re-drilling handled in the same visit
• Boxes stay in place, so your kitchen stays usable
• 2-year workmanship warranty

Frequently Asked Questions